Lights On
by MezzoPenDoll05
Summary: Peeta has nothing to tell the Capitol, when they take him hostage. These are the days between, as he, Johanna and the others fight to stay sane.


Lights On

The first thing Peeta Mellark becomes aware of is the bright, white light pressing against his eyelids. His first thought is that he is in a hospital, though he does not know where. Reaching out for his senses, he discovers that he is in one piece. That the injuries sustained in the clock arena have been healed. This does not come as a surprise. The Capitol will want him in one piece. That is the thing, though, Peeta is not sure why, precisely, the Capitol has taken him. Does not know whose hands were at the controls of the hovercraft that lifted him, paralyzed, out of the exploding clock arena. Dirt in his eyes, dirt in his wounds, dirt in his mouth. That he has been healed of the scabs from the fog and the deep gashes Brutus inflicted tells him exactly nothing. What Peeta wants to know more than anything, more than where he is, more than why he is here, wherever here is focuses entirely on Katniss and the others. Is he alone?

Peeta feels, and rightly so, that opening his eyes at this point might trigger some interaction that he is as-yet unprepared for. Whatever is to come, it is surely on a spectrum between a happy reunion with Katniss and Haymitch and finding that he has failed, that Katniss is dead and unspeakable horrors await him. He knows he only has as long as he can keep his eyes closed, his breathing still, his heart rate slow, to process his options. So he breathes deeply and thinks, tries to prioritize for his next move.

The first is to consider his last moments in the arena. Katniss's voice screaming, screaming for him. Brutus dead on the ground. Flutters of tiny, almost feathery bits of the forcefield raining down around him as fireworks lit up the sky and bombs inexplicably blow the earth around him to bits. Being on the ground. Bleeding. Blood and dirt. Then, the hovercraft.

When Peeta opens his eyes, carefully, slowly, he is on a simple shelf-bed. The room is perfectly white, unmistakably Capitol and strangely large. He is under a scratchy, thick, impossible blanket. Though he is not from District Eight, Peeta knows that even he with all of his strength could never rend this blanket. It's suicide-proof. There is a desk, but no chair. He is imprisoned. He notices something else that is odd, as he repositions himself. They have divested him of his prosthetic leg. The ugliness of the stump that ends just below his knee is hidden by his white jumpsuit. A prison, then. Not a hospital. But he is not chained up. Where can he go on one leg, anyway? Hopping to escape feels highly unlikely. _But not impossible_. He chastises himself.

Peeta realizes he did not need to take so many moments hiding his consciousness. It is completely silent for what feels like forever. After awhile, he calms down, begins to feel almost bored. There is nothing for him to do besides try to stand, to walk. He falls many times before he hobbles back across the large room to his cot. He sits there for a long time. Wondering if he will ever feel tired again. Wondering how long he has been here. He is trying to keep Katniss out of his head. Her face, her kisses, her braid. He is not sure what kind of technology the Capitol has, but part of him has begun to wonder if they can see his thoughts. He does not want them to have any part of Katniss. But thinking this only brings her to the forefront of his mind. The sound of her final screams, his name, over and over and over again.

Then, what feels like hours later, but may well have been mere minutes, the unmistakable sound of peacekeeper's boots, a bizarre, disoriented animalistic growl. As it comes closer, he begins to be able to sort out words. Curse words, mostly. Then a loud grinding noise, the sound of a body hitting the floor, and the incomprehensible swearing gives way to quiet mumbles and whimpers. The sounds no longer come from the grate in the doorway, now they seem to be coming from above his head. There is another grate up there. The voice does not belong to Katniss, is the first thing that registers in his mind. The person is gasping, still moaning quietly.

"Who's there?" he calls out.

"Peeta? They got you too, eh loverboy?" It is Johanna Mason, unmistakably. But Johanna does not sound like Johanna. She sounds tired, her voice is raspy.

"What happened to you? Where are we? Where's Katniss?"

Johanna's barking laugh answers him, sharper, shorter than usual. "They'll torture the fuck out of you if I tell you where she is. But I know." She says this with a strange mix of pride and indignation, Peeta wants to ask the question, but she answers it before he can, "She's safe."

Peeta's mind is still trying to wrap around her strange words. Katniss is not here. Johanna is here. Johanna knows where Katniss is. The Capitol does not.

"Did they hurt you?"

The laugh again, still very weak but gaining steam by the moment.

"Oh, they've been hurting me my whole life. Kind of nice to have them do it to my face for a change. You hear that, ya assholes?" her voice is rising quickly, hysterically, Peeta hears, notices for the first time, that Johanna has a thick District accent,"Bring back that thug with the metal gloves! At least he has the balls to punch me in the face!"

Johanna's words scare him absolutely, to his core. Part of him is hopeful, though, that perhaps her voice seems to have become raspy from this yelling and taunting rather than from screams of pain and agony.

She is still yelling, yelling directly at Snow, now, however irrational that may seem. And, Peeta considers, it's not impossible that there are cameras. That Snow can see their every movement from some far off, comfortable place.

"Johanna," he interrupts, trying to stand somehow on his cot to speak directly through the grate, "Johanna, calm down. Tell me what happened."

"I can't tell you, loverboy," her voice is so frustrated and thick with exhaustion, "They're listening, don't you realize? Shit, I didn't think stupidity was a fucking sexually transmitted disease! You must have caught it from Brainless!"

The implications of her words hit him hard as she goes on and on, seemingly without control, her battered voice barrelling onward, though it cracks at every breath she takes. But she has passed him a message he knows they won't be able to sort out from all the rest of the angry words. We are still playing the game here, he realizes. Katniss is his pregnant wife, brainless, as dubbed from the arena. Do not drop the facade. He wants to tell her to calm down again, to try to make her anger stop, make her rest. But he doesn't fully know her motivations. Has she been screaming like this for days and he's just been knocked out? Or is this for his benefit?

It may stop her screaming, more questions. "How long have we been here?" She can't hear him over her own shouting, "Johanna!" He shouts, "How long? How long have we been here?"

She does stop, but only gives way to loud, harsh laughter. "Not long, loverboy. Only long enough for them to come after me twice. Can't tell though, can you? Can't tell how many days," She laughs again, and Peeta feels the need to remind her that he had been unconscious, but then her voice drops, and all of the twisted humor vanishes, and she says in an awful voice, "because," she says deeply, true fear penetrating her speech, "they never turn out the lights."

The horror of this washes over Peeta as he looks desperately around the room. No switches, of course. He is not sure why this is so perfectly abhorrent. But it is. Irrevocably. Even in the arena, where the cameras and the audience were everywhere, there was always the darkness, the safety of a sleeping bag. There is no such privacy or safety here. It is panoptical. The lights and the whiteness.

Peeta is vaguely aware that his leg hurts, and recalls that the leg in pain no longer exists. Perhaps the fake leg had helped him with particular problem, before. But now without it... he feels incredibly vulnerable. He hasn't looked at the stump that used to end in a sturdy foot in a very long time. He imagines he will see quite a bit of it, in the near future.

Everything he can think to talk to Johanna about seems stupid. She cannot tell him what she knows. She has said that Katniss is safe, but is she only saying that because it's exactly what their captors do not want to hear?

Johanna's shouting has stopped now and she is breathing raggedly, her chest whistling. Peeta knows this is not a good sound, that she is badly hurt.

"Did they patch you up from the arena?"

"'Course not," she scoffs, "they don't have big plans for me besides information gathering," she takes a deep breath and screams out, "which they will _never get from me!_"

Implications here too, of course. They have big plans for him.

"What are they going to do with us?" He tries not to let his fear color his voice, but it does.

"Mellark, get this through your head right now: they're going to hurt us in absolutely any way they can. But they don't have Katniss. So they're fucked anyway and we won," her voice is quieter now. "'y'hear that, y'assholes? Yer fucked anyway." Peeta doesn't hear Johanna slip into unconsciousness, but he knows this is what has happened, when her whistling breath evens out and she goes silent.

Peeta wishes that he were tired. He wishes for there to be someone else with them, but chastises himself for not counting Johanna, even unconscious as good company. He wonders about what she said in the arena. Perhaps it is true, for Johanna, the only thing they can do to her is beat her body. She has no one to hold over her head. No one like Katniss, his family, his friends to search out, hunt down. The thought of his family crashes over him, hard. Do they know where he is? Do they know what happened after the world exploded in the arena?

He thinks about them for the next few hours, and decides to call this time afternoon, as he imagines himself having simply woken up late. Maybe he will be able to keep some semblance of time, here, through the whiteness. The lights already feel so bright. Are they really brighter than normal lighting? The bakery is lit almost exclusively by large candles and the bright fires on wintery nights. Even in the summer when the sun streams through the windows and the ovens feel impossibly hot, nothing is as bright as this.

This is normal. Peeta decides to try to convince himself. _This is where I live for now. Do not let simply existing in this place be torture._ Isn't it better that it's light, rather than dark? He knows that the answer is no. The light is so harsh, so awful. It makes him feel completely naked, even in his jumpsuit and wrapped in the blanket.

Peeta is pleased when a slot in the door opens and a tray of food is shoved through. In his estimation, perhaps it is dinner time. He thinks to call out to Johanna but isn't sure she has been given food. And she probably needs her rest. It is only bread and water, but Peeta has had much worse and eats it.

His thoughts land back on his family. He is strangely having some difficulty recalling their faces. His father has a broad face, like his oldest brother Leffsa. His mother's face is narrower. Ciab's face is different still, round. He is focusing on picturing each of their faces perfectly. He decides this will be his evening activity. He will think of their faces until they are perfectly clear. But the only face that comes easily to mind belongs to Katniss. He knows her face so perfectly, each freckle, the single line across her forehead. Her perfect lips that stay set in a line most of the time, but do have the potential to bear a grin to shame the sun. His heart aches for her. He has to hope that Johanna is right.

He is just starting to feel like maybe evening is over and he could sleep when the sound of boots returns. It is with more curiosity than fear that he wonders whether they have come to have another go at Johanna or come to see him. When his door slides open and peacekeepers march in, he is almost relieved, excited to get out of this room. But it is not to be. They have brought a chair, and manacles. He is somewhat relieved that he knows he will not have to lie. That he has almost nothing to lie about. He has no idea what is going on.


End file.
